In Memoriam

LAURIE BOWER

Laurie Bower was the musical equivalent of a Swiss Army knife: trombone player, singer, conductor, choral arranger, mentor and even professional whistler. A mainstay on the Toronto music circuit for nearly six decades, Mr. Bower, who died in Toronto on Jan. 19 at the age of 82, was steeped in the retro swing-era sounds of the big bands and lush vocal arrangements. He may be remembered best for founding the Laurie Bower Singers and co-founding Toronto’s Spitfire Band. Considered a workhorse in the city’s tight-knit music business, Mr. Bower recorded jingles for thousands of television and radio commercials, ranging from local businesses to Fortune 500 companies – anything that required a big-band sound. And if any of those recordings required whistling, his were the lips to do it. “He was the go-to whistler,” noted drummer Brian Barlow, who worked with Mr. Bower for years in the studio and on the road, and credits Mr. Bower for getting him started. “He was one of the fairest people in a business where that list is fairly small,” Mr. Barlow added. Mr. Bower’s smooth trombone slid effortlessly across genres, from toe-tapping swing to languid jazz to Dixieland, to what radio used to call easy listening or adult contemporary. He performed a knee-weakening solo at Montreal Bistro in 2002 while playing Hogtown Blues with Ron Collier’s Big Band. The solo, rendered with a mute and just the right amount of anguish, was captured for posterity on a shaky video posted to YouTube. He was respected as a technically skillful player – “lyrical, very melodic,” said Terry Promane, co-ordinator of jazz studies at the University of Toronto, who played trombone alongside Mr. Bower in the early 2000s. “Any trombone player who wanted to work was required to play in that style. He knew a million tunes.” Lawrence Wayne Bower was born in Kirkland Lake, Ont., on Aug. 31, 1933, to George and Rose Bower. He earned a bachelor’s degree at U of T after studying choral technique, music education and the trombone with Harry Stevenson of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He played trombone in the dance bands of Benny Louis, Ozzie Williams and Mart Kenney before joining the Five Playboys, fresh-faced lads in pinstriped jackets who crooned on CBC-TV’s The Jack Kane Show. (The Globe and Mail called Mr. Bower, then 23, “a 6’-1” blond.”) He struck out on his own as a trombonist, singer and choral arranger, and became a sought-after session man in Toronto studios. He rose to greater prominence in 1967 when he conducted the Young Canada Singers, a group of 10-year-old children, in the English version of Bobby Gimby’s Centennial-year anthem, Ca-na-da. In 1969, after singing with several CBC vocal groups, he formed the Laurie Bower Singers, known for their silky covers of pop songs by Neil Diamond, Michael Jackson, even Supertramp, among many others. The three female and three male voices (including Mr. Bower’s rich baritone), backed by an 18-piece band, performed breezy, cascading harmonies to create a mellow sound comparable to that of the Ray Conniff Singers. They made a dozen records, all arranged by Mr. Bower, had a solid fan base and plenty of TV and commercial work. “He sang like he played trombone,” recalled one of the group’s singers, Cal Dodd, “and he was like a father figure to us.” He was always negotiating with ACTRA (the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists) to make sure we got paid properly.” Mr. Dodd estimated the group recorded two jingles a day for 25 years, hawking everything from raisin bran to beer to Coca-Cola. “If you made a record and wanted a background vocal group, you’d go to the Laurie Bower Singers,” Mr. Barlow said. “If you had a TV show and wanted a vocal group, it would be the Laurie Bower Singers.” In the early 1980s, Mr. Bower co-founded the Spitfire Band with singer Jackie Rae, who got the name from the British war planes he flew in the Second World War, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross. It was intended as a studio orchestra that played big-band standards. But following the success of the group’s first record, the 18 members hit the road, with Mr. Bower on trombone and as vocal arranger. The Spitfires, pronounced “a success story” by Globe jazz critic Mark Miller, played at conventions, fundraisers and public concerts, and earned a coveted residency in the late 1980s at the Imperial Room of Toronto’s Royal York Hotel. In keeping with the aviation theme, recalled Jack McFadden, who played upright bass with Mr. Bower for 25 years, they performed in 2003 at the unveiling of a statue of the original test pilot of Canada’s doomed Avro Arrow supersonic plane. Micky Erbe, who played trumpet, recalled that Mr. Bower was a perfect choice to run the band’s day-to-day operations “because God knows he knew everyone.” After finishing their last set in the wee hours, Mr. Bower would announce that he was off to Kirkland Lake to see his mother. “He loved his family,” Mr. Erbe said. At the same time, Mr. Bower played trombone in other local big bands, including one led by Guido Basso, a trumpet player who conceded that the trombone is much misunderstood. “It’s a very difficult instrument. It has seven positions, and each position creates different notes” depending on the player’s embouchure, or shaping of the lips, and slide position; “with a trombone you have to find the right spot on the slide.” It’s all in the arms and lips. “He was a great soloist,” Mr. Basso went on. “Everybody loved to hear him play Tommy Dorsey’s I’m Getting Sentimental Over You. He played the hell out of it. I mean, just right on.” Mr. McFadden recalled a self-effacing man who, when complimented, would reply, “Well, I just move the slide in and out.” As for this sort of music, which experiences dips and swells in popularity, “it will never die out,” Mr. McFadden asserted. “It’s the greatest music that ever lived.”Ron Csillag - Globe and Mail

PETE COULMAN

Film & TV composer and arranger Pete Coulman passed away on April 17 of cancer, three days before his 60th birthday. Coulman started out as a composer with the SOCAN pre-cursor organization CAPAC in 1982, and had a long and storied career in the music business. He was hand-picked by Tommy Banks to write the music charts for The Tommy Banks Show, a nationwide variety and talk show which aired on CBC-TV from 1971 to 1974. He also enjoyed a stint as the arranger for Tony Bennett, and has worked with such established fellow composers as Carl Lenox, Jack Lenz and Lou Pomanti, among others. More recently, he’d established an extremely successful career composing the music for various children’s programs, including The Adventures of Napkin Man, The Busytown Mysteries, The Doodlebops, Rolie Polie Olie, Super Why and Goosebumps. This work earned him three SOCAN Awards in the 2000s: In both 2011 and 2012, he won the SOCAN Domestic Animated Television Series Music Award for The Busytown Mysteries, co-composed with Carl Lenox and David Tedesco, and published by Cjar Music Publishing and ole; and in 2007 he won the SOCAN Children's Music Award for The Doodlebops, co-composed with Carl Lenox, David Tedesco, John Rutledge and Lisa Lougheed, and published by Cjar Music Publishing.

MAXINE WILLAN

(pianist, arranger) was born in Perth, Western Australia. She emigrated to Canada in the 1970s and holds dual Canadian and Australian citizenship. She completed classical piano studies while still in Australia, culminating with an Association of Music of Australia Degree in Piano Performance. She moved to Canada primarily to study jazz and pop music with Darwyn Aitken and the late Gordon Delamont (Modern Arranging and Orchestration). In 1977 she was awarded a Rob McConnell Arranging Scholarship, and after continuing studies at the Royal Conservatory of Music, was named an Associate of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Piano Teaching, Composition, and Theory.

Willan joined the Toronto Musicians’ Association in 1973, and began playing professionally as a solo pianist in clubs and hotels throughout the city. She formed an all-girl band which was active on the Toronto scene at the time, and then joined a big rehearsal band to gain experience in that musical format. During the same period she was active as a composer, collaborating with various writers on musical theatre works including Twelfth Night Blues which was ultimately staged at the Stratford Summer Music Festival to favourable reviews.

Maxine Willan released her ‘Alone and Together’ solo and trio piano CD in 1998. She has been pianist for the Swing Shift big band for more than six years, works with the Ed Vokurka Jazz Swing Ensemble, and continues to work in various venues around Toronto playing solo piano, leading her own Maxine Willan Ensemble, and working with various other small groups and big bands. She is also active as a piano teacher. She passed away on April 19, 2016.

Enrico Farina

Died June 2, 2007. Pop singer during the '70s. Joined February 12, 1962. Life Member. In 1976 he was at top of the charts with his song "Let me love you forever", and in 1977, he was again at the top of the charts with his song "Hello Hello", in 1978 his song in English version "Ciao Ciao Bambina" was number one.

Lorand Fenyves

Violinist, teacher, b Budapest 20 Feb 1918, naturalized Canadian 1971, d Switzerland 23 March 2004. He studied at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, where his teachers included Oscar Studer, Jenö Hubay, Leo Weiner, Imre Waldbauer, and Zoltán Kodály. In 1934 he earned the artist's and teacher's diploma, won the Hubay Prize, and began his career with a tour of Europe and the premiere of Felix Weingartner's Concerto in Budapest and Vienna, with the composer conducting. At the invitation of Bronislaw Huberman, Fenyves emigrated to Palestine in 1936 and became concertmaster of the new Palestine Symphony Orchestra (later the Israel Philharmonic). There he also was one of five founders of the Israel Conservatory and Academy of Music in 1940. In Tel Aviv he founded the Fenyves Quartet (1940-56), renamed the Israel String Quartet in 1948. He moved to Geneva in 1957 as concertmaster of the Orchestre de la Suisse romande and teacher at the Geneva Conservatory. He came to Canada in 1963 as string teacher and coach at the Orford Art Centre (returning there each year until 1976, and continuing to teach there in the early 2000s). Together with Gilles Lefebvre he developed plans for the formation of an ensemble that was destined to become the Orford String Quartet (the violins of which - Andrew Dawes and Kenneth Perkins - had been pupils of his in Geneva). A visiting teacher at the University of Toronto in 1965, Fenyves settled in Toronto in 1966 and joined the Faculty of Music where he continued to coach the Orford Quartet. He was named professor emeritus in 1983 and remained on the teaching faculty in 2004. He also began to teach at the University of Western Ontario in 1985. His pupils included Adele Armin, Otto Armin, Steven Dann, Victor Martin, Erika Raum, and many others who have been members of major Canadian orchestras. He was a teacher and coach with the JM World Orchestra in 1970 and 1976, with the NYO 1966-77, and in 1972 he began his continuous association with the Banff CA. As well, he taught at the RCMT's Glenn Gould Professional School. He gave master classes in England at Aldeburgh, the Cornwall International Seminar of Music, and the Royal Northern College of Music; in Japan annually at the Toho School; in Hungary each year beginning in 1985; and in the USA He took part in the Haydn-Riegger Festival in Austria in 1993. Fenyves performed extensively in Europe and North America as a chamber musician, as soloist with major orchestras under such conductors as Ansermet, Bernstein, Fricsay, Ozawa, and Schuricht, and with such recital partners as Béla Siki, György Sebök, Menahem Pressler, Anton Kuerti, Patricia Parr, Pierre Souvairan, and Lydia Wong. He continued to perform solo and chamber music at Banff, Toronto, and elsewhere, including at his 85th birthday concert at the University of Toronto in 2003. An outstanding performer and exceptional teacher, Fenyves possessed what William Aide described as 'a wisdom about what music means and how it can be taught as a life-affirming force' (Notes from the Faculty of Music, Spring-Summer 1983). He was awarded Hungary's Cross of the Order of Merit in 1998. Fenyves was considered by many to be one of the greatest violin teachers in the world (Globe and Mail, 20 Feb 1998).

Henry Falcon Cuesta, Sr.

(December 23, 1931 – December 17, 2003), was an American-born musician who was a cast member of The Lawrence Welk Show. His primary instrument was the clarinet. At an early age, Cuesta began studying classical violin, then switched to woodwinds. He proved himself gifted and was selected to play with the Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra in Texas while still in high school. Before being drafted into the United States Army in 1952, he graduated from Del Mar College where he majored in music. In the Army Special Services, he was involved in entertaining troops in Europe and England, which included a "Tribute to Gershwin" concert with the Stuttgart Symphony Orchestra. After his Army duty, Cuesta toured the United States and Canada and developed his own highly personal style. While living in Toronto, Cuesta and his group became popular for visiting musicians, including Benny Goodman on one occasion. He later toured in the working band of the legendary trombonist, Jack Teagarden. Bobby Hackett advised him to get in touch with Lawrence Welk, and after listening to his recordings, Welk hired him immediately. Cuesta made countless personal appearances performing and conducting in jazz festivals, state and county fairs, conventions, supper clubs, and symphony pops concerts. He appeared as a soloist with Jack Teagarden, Bob Crosby, Mel Tormé, in a Bobby Vinton television special, on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and ten years on The Lawrence Welk Show. He also made several appearances to the Colorado Springs Invitational Jazz Party and performed with numerous international jazz musicians. Cuesta died on December 17, 2003 at the age of 71 at his home in Sherman Oaks, California after a bout with cancer. His only son, Henry, Jr., was shot and killed in a robbery at the age of seventeen while he was working in 1987 at a movie theater on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, California.

Clifford Poole

Pianist, teacher, composer, b Reddish, near Manchester, 25 May 1916, d Toronto 16 Jul 2003. He was taken to Canada as a child and settled in Toronto, where he studied piano with Mona Bates. With another Bates pupil, Gordon Hallett, Poole formed the Poole-Hallett Duo, which gave concerts 1936-42 in Toronto and Montreal and on CBC radio. In 1938 Poole made his solo debut at Eaton Auditorium, Toronto. He served in the RCAF during World War II and occasionally, while on leave, performed with the Bates Ten-Piano Ensemble. With his wife, Margaret Parsons, he formed the Parsons-Poole Duo and toured Canada and the USA extensively 1954-65. (See Parsons for discography.) Poole taught 1938-41 and 1943-8 at the TCM (RCMT). In 1948 he joined the staffs of the WOCM and the Music Teachers' College, both in London, Ont. In 1956 the conservatory and college became constituent parts of the University of Western Ontario, and Poole served 1957-60 as principal of both. In 1963 he rejoined the piano department of the RCMT and began teaching piano at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto. He taught until the 1990s. Chia Chou, Beverley Diamond, Zenovia Kushpeta, Marjan Mozetich, Halyna Mychalczuk, and Raymond Pannell were among Poole's many pupils. Between 1949 and 1962 Poole and Margaret Parsons composed, compiled, and edited much piano music for young players, including their Parsons-Poole Festival Piano Series, and Poole continued to contribute to RCMT-Harris publications. He used the pseudonyms Charles Pierson and Ernest Marsden for some of his music publications. Poole's many pedagogical piano pieces have remained favourites among the festival repertoire. Clifford Poole: Piano Highlights (HPA70) is available from Frederick Harris. Poole was music director 1968-81 at St Anne's Anglican Church in Toronto where he also directed the St Anne's Music and Drama Society, which specialized in productions of Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. Poole was conductor of the York Regional Symphony Orchestra (York Symphony Orchestra) 1973-89, of the East York Symphony Orchestra 1978-84, and of the Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra 1980-5. He founded the Cathedral Bluffs Symphony Orchestra in 1985 and conducted it until 1999.

PAUL GROSNEY

(trumpeter, flugelhornist, bandleader) was born on February 10, 1923 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He passed away on May 17, 2003 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He left Winnipeg for New York when he was 19 years old, working with legendary vibraphonist Red Norvo there until enlisting in the Royal Canadian Air Force to serve his country in the second World War. After the war, he worked in the band of (saxophonist) Georgie Auld, toured with Buddy Rich’s big band, and was a featured player with Bert Niosi’s orchestra at the Palais Royale in Toronto, before moving back to Winnipeg in 1948. He remained there until 1959, leading bands in various clubs including the hot spot of the time, the Rancho Don Carlos, where Grosney’s band backed visiting music and movie stars including Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Doris Day, Sammy Davis Jr., The Andrews Sisters, and Bob Hope. Grosney rejoined the Toronto music scene in 1959, working as a sideman in numerous bands and ensembles including Trump Davison’s Orchestra, the Harvey Silver Dixieland Band, and the Canadian Tribute to Glenn Miller Band, as well as leading his own groups, most notably Paul Grosney’s Kansas City Local in jazz venues all over the city. Throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, Grosney served as Music Director for the famed George’s Bourbon Street and Basin Street clubs in downtown Toronto. Paul Grosney played lead trumpet with the Harvey Silver Band when they appeared in concert during the “Sound of Toronto Jazz” Series at the Ontario Science Centre on December 3, 1979. His own “Kansas City Express” band was featured in the same series on October 20, 1980, and the Paul Grosney Septet performed their ‘Tribute to Louis Armstrong’ on February 26, 2001.

John (Jacob) Weinzweig

(March 11, 1913 – August 24, 2006) was a Canadian composer of classical music. Born in Toronto, Weinzweig went to Harbord Collegiate Institute, and studied music at the university. In 1937, he left for the United States to study under Bernard Rogers. During the Second World War, he began composing film music, and in 1952 he became a professor at his old university in Toronto. In the previous year he had co-founded the Canadian League of Composers, and he was actively involved in several other organisations representing musicians and composers. In 1974, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 1988, he was awarded the Order of Ontario.

John William "Long John" Baldry

(12 January 1941 – 21 July 2005) was an English blues singer and a voice actor. He sang with many British musicians, with Rod Stewart and Elton John appearing in bands led by Baldry in the 1960s. He enjoyed pop success in the UK where Let the Heartaches Begin reached No. 1 in 1967 and in Australia where his duet with Kathi McDonald You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' reached number two in 1980. Baldry lived in Canada from the late 1970s until his death; there he continued to make records and do voiceover work. One of his best known roles in voice acting was as Dr. Robotnik in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog.After time in New York City and Los Angeles in 1978, Baldry settled in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he became a Canadian citizen. He toured the west coast, as well as the U.S. Northwest. Baldry also toured the Canadian east, including one 1985 show in Kingston, Ontario, where audience members repeatedly called for the title track from his 1979 album Baldry's Out! – to which he replied, "I'll say he is!" In 1979, he teamed with Seattle singer Kathi McDonald to record a version of The Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin", following which McDonald became part of his touring group for two decades. The song made the lower reaches of the US Billboard charts but was a top 5 hit in Australia in 1980. He last recorded with the Stony Plain label. His 1997 album Right To Sing The Blues won a Juno Award in the Blues Album of the Year category in the Juno Awards of 1997. He played his last live show in Columbus, Ohio, on 19 July 2004, at Barristers Hall with guitarist Bobby Cameron. The show was produced by Andrew Myers. They played to a small group, some came from Texas. Two years previously the two had a 10-venue sell-out tour of Canada. In 2003 Baldry headlined the British Legends of Rhythm and Blues UK tour, alongside Zoot Money, Ray Dorset and Paul Williams.Baldry's final UK Tour as 'The Long John Baldry Trio' concluded with a performance on Saturday 13 November 2004 at The King's Lynn Arts Centre, King's Lynn, Norfolk, England. The trio consisted of LJB, Butch Coulter on harmonica and Dave Kelly on slide guitar.

Harry Freedman

(April 5, 1922 – September 16, 2005) was a Canadian composer, english hornist, and music educator of Polish birth. He wrote a significant amount of symphonic works, including several film scores, and also composed a substantial amount of chamber music. He also composed music for six ballets, an opera, some incidental music for the theatre, and a few vocal art songs and choral works. He was awarded a Juno Award in 1996 for his symphonic work Touchings, which was recorded by the Esprit Orchestra on the Nexus label. He won the 1998 composition prize at the International Rostrum of Composers for Borealis, a symphonic work co-commissioned by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Soundstreams Canada, and CBC Radio. In 2002 the Canadian Music Centre released a commercial recording dedicated to his music, Canadian Composers Portraits: Harry Freedman. At the age of three, Freedman immigrated with his family from Poland to Canada where the family settled in Medicine Hat, Alberta. His father worked in the fur trade. At the age of 9, Freedman and his family relocated to Winnipeg where he enrolled at the Winnipeg School of Art at the age of 13 to study the art of painting. Freedman's musical training began relatively late. He was an admirer of big band music and began taking his first music lessons in the clarinet in 1940 at the age of 18. His teacher, Arthur Hart, would eventually become the principal clarinetist of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and it is from him that Freedman got his first exposure to symphonic music. His musical training was interrupted for several years with the outbreak of World War II, and he spent 1941–1945 as a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force. In 1945 he entered The Royal Conservatory of Music, where he studied from 1945 to 1951. His most influential teachers at the school were his music composition professor, John Weinzweig, and his oboe instrcutor, Perry Bauman. He also studied in the summers at the Tanglewood Music Center where he was a pupil of Olivier Messiaen and Aaron Copland. In 1946 Freedman became a member of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra as an english hornist, remaining with the orchestra through 1971. In 1951 he helped co-found the Canadian League of Composers, later serving as the organization president from 1975 to 1978. From 1972 to 1981, he taught at the Courtenay Youth Music Centre where he was also the composer-in-residence. Among his notable pupil there was Gilles Bellemare. In 1977 he was the subject of a radio documentary made by Norma Beecroft for the CBC. From 1979 to 1981, he was the president of the Guild of Canadian Film Composers and, from 1985 to 1990, he was music officer for the Toronto Arts Council. In 1980 the Canadian Music Council named him composer of the year, and he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1984. From 1989 to 1991, he served on the music faculty of the University of Toronto, where he taught classes in music composition and orchestration.

HARTLAND (HART) WHEELER

(tenor saxophonist, clarinetist, singer) was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on December 22, 1921. He passed away there June 10, 2005. A professional jazz musician since he was 18 years old, Hart Wheeler's main influences were clarinetist Benny Goodman and saxman Ben Webster. Wheeler served in the Royal Canadian Air Force Band in World War II. Early in his career he played in the big bands of Ellis McLintock, Mart Kenney, Bobby Gimby, and Art Hallman. He guested several times for TV/movie director Norman Jewison on his CBC TV series "The Denny Vaughan Show"; played with famed artists including James P. Johnson, Cab Calloway, Clark Terry, Ken Peplowski, and Wilbur and Sidney DeParis; and was in the opening band for the most famous jazz concert ever held in Toronto, the now legendary night on May 15th, 1953 at Massey Hall when Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker headed up the band which also included Bud Powell, Max Roach and Charles Mingus. He was a charter member of Jim Galloway’s Wee Big Band, and in recent years, playing tenor sax and clarinet with the Canadian Tribute to Glenn Miller Orchestra, while also arranging, coaching, and singing with the ‘The Fabulous Moonbeams’ vocal quartet. He led his own Hart Wheeler Quartet (pianist Ralph Fraser, Lorne Hamilton on drums, bassist Bob Price) in the “Sound of Toronto Jazz” Concert Series on November 7, 1994, and was a featured member of the Paul Grosney Septet’s ‘Tribute to Louis Armstrong’ SOTJ concert on February 26, 2001.

Domenic Michele Antonio Troiano

(January 17, 1946 – May 25, 2005) was a Canadian rock guitarist, most notable for his contributions to Mandala, The James Gang, The Guess Who and as a solo artist. Born in Modugno, Italy, Troiano became a naturalized Canadian in 1955. He was raised in Toronto and began playing guitar at age 15. As a professional musician, he was a guitarist for Ronnie Hawkins, James Gang, The Guess Who and Bush, among others. His first group of note was Robbie Lane & The Disciples, who were hired en masse to back singer Ronnie Hawkins upon the departure of Levon and the Hawks. In 1965, Troiano joined The Rogues who became The Five Rogues and comprised singer George Olliver, bass player Don Elliot, keyboard player Josef Chirowski and drummer Pentti Glan. In September 1966, the band changed its name to Mandala and recorded two singles, including the top ten hit, "Opportunity" in February 1967. Olliver and Chirowski left later that year and were replaced by Roy Kenner and organist Henry Babraj. With yet another organist, Hugh Sullivan, the group scored another big Canadian hit in 1968 with "Love-itis" on Atlantic Records and issued an LP, "Soul Crusade". The band formally broke up in June 1969, but Troiano, Kenner, Sullivan and Glan soon regrouped as Bush, with bassist Prakash John. Kenner also later sang in the James Gang with Troiano, who left in the mid-1970s to play with The Guess Who. He performed with the Domenic Troiano Band in the late 1970s and scored his biggest hit with the 1979 Disco-themed "We All Need Love". He also wrote music for television including the series Night Heat. Songs composed by Troiano, such as "I Can Hear You Calling", have been performed by other artists including Three Dog Night. His guitar work can be heard on recordings by Moe Koffman, Joe Cocker, James Cotton and Long John Baldry. He also had a Canadian release with the band "Black Market" with the original Independent label El Mocambo Records. For nearly twenty-five years, beginning in the early 1980s, Troiano concentrated on contributing to the work of others, as a musician and as a producer, rather than enhancing his own solo career. Guitarist Domenic Troiano was closely associated with the "Toronto Sound" of that era, contributed at least two songs to that genre: "356 Sammon Ave." (1972), a short, instrumental tribute to his parents' former home in East York, and "My Old Toronto Home" (1973). Domenic Troiano's production credits include albums by Kilowatt, David Gibson, John Rutledge and Patria. He was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1996.

Kristine Bogyo

Died April 6, 2007. Bogyo studied cello with Janos Starker at Indiana University and Bernard Greenhouse in New York. She founded and conducted the Mooredale Youth Orchestra, and also founded and was Artistic Director of Mooredale Concerts, both under the umbrella of the Rosedale-Moore Park Association. She was also the co-founder of the Festival of the Sound in Parry Sound, Ont. The inspiration for the Mooredale Youth Orchestra came from within her own family. In 1986, when her violin-playing son Julian (who is now assistant conductor of the Budapest Festival Orchestra and in the fall becomes assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony) was 10 years old, Bogyo founded the orchestra to give him (and later his cellist brother, Rafael) and other young musicians the opportunity to play together in a congenial environment. Today over 100 young musicians ranging in age from 8 to 20 are enrolled in the orchestra where, coached by leading professionals, they perform three concerts a year. Over the years they have performed ten symphonies by Haydn, eight by Mozart, four by Beethoven, and a large number of other important works, all under Bogyo’s direction. The orchestra allows young musicians the opportunity to work together in a non-competitive atmosphere, and has had profoundly beneficial effects on the young participants, who are often isolated in their schools for lack of enough peers with similar interests. Bogyo regularly received numerous letters from the “graduates” and their parents, not just for inspiring them to love classical music and continue their studies, but for helping them cope with very difficult periods in their lives. For Mooredale Concerts, which presents more than a dozen performances a year, Bogyo sought out brilliant young Canadian talents and provided them with cameo appearances at most Mooredale events, often followed by participation in chamber music with leading professionals. Since 1989 Bogyo employed and stimulated over a hundred professional and highly accomplished young musicians to work together in a variety of chamber ensembles. Some unknown young performers she showcased in the past have since become leading Canadian stars, including Isabel Bayrakdarian, Martin Beaver, Russell Braun, Measha Brueggergosman, Stewart Goodyear, Erika Raum and James Sommerville, Bogyo commissioned several Canadian composers to create new works, most notably ‘A Song of Lilith’, which premiered in 2001 and toured in many other cities across the country. She worked closely with celebrated Canadian author Joy Kogawa, composer Larysa Kuzmenko and artist Lilian Broca to create this unique multi-media event. Bogyo’s most recent initiative was Music & Truffles: short, interactive concerts that introduce classical music to very young children. With the narrator in a colourful costume performing a script created by Bogyo, every performance of Music & Truffles has been sold out since the series’ inception in 2003. As a performer Kristine Bogyo appeared as soloist with many orchestras such as the Montreal Symphony, the New Chamber Orchestra, the North York Symphony, the Northern Sinfonia, and the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, with which she also served as principal cello. She also played in the orchestras of the Canadian Opera Company, the National Ballet, and the Toronto Symphony, and participated in Music at Marlboro, the Festivals of Santa Fe, Parry Sound, Grand Tetons and Lockenhaus (Gidon Kremer’s festival in Austria). She has performed recitals in Chicago, Cleveland, Princeton, Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver, among many others cities, and was heard frequently on the CBC. In 2005 Bogyo was summoned to Rideau Hall to receive the Meritorious Service Medal from Her Excellency the Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson, in recognition of her work promoting young Canadian musicians. Bogyo was married to pianist Anton Kuerti. They often performed together, and also released two successful CD’s. In January 2003 CBC Television featured the couple and their two sons in an hour-long documentary, called "A Marriage in Music." According to the Montreal Star, MBogyo was “one of those rarities that the world of cellists produces from time to time - a player of strength and vigour who can make a long, warm lyrical line sing.”

Dennis Gerrard Stephen Doherty

(November 29, 1940 – January 19, 2007) was a Canadian singer, songwriter and musician. He was most widely known as a founding member of the 1960s musical group The Mamas & the Papas. Denny Doherty was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Doherty started his musical career in Halifax in 1956 with a band called the Hepsters. With friends Richard Sheehan, Eddie Thibodeau and Mike O'Connell, the Hepsters played at clubs in the Halifax area. The band lasted about two years. Sheehan recalls that they drew crowds wherever they went due to Denny's incredible voice. In 1960, at the age of 19, Doherty, along with Pat LaCroix and Richard Byrne, began a folk group called The Colonials in Halifax, Nova Scotia. When they got a record deal with Columbia Records, they changed their name to The Halifax Three. The band recorded two LPs and had a minor hit, "The Man Who Wouldn't Sing Along With Mitch", but broke up in 1963. Coincidentally, they separated at a hotel called "The Colonial" in Los Angeles. In 1963, Doherty established a friendship with Cass Elliot when she was with a band called "The Big 3." While on tour with "The Halifax III", Doherty met John Phillips and his new wife, model Michelle Gilliam. A few months later, The Halifax III dissolved, and Doherty and their accompanist, Zal Yanovsky, were left broke in Hollywood. Elliot heard of their troubles and convinced her manager to hire them. Thus, Doherty and Yanovsky joined the Big 3 (increasing the number of band members to four). Soon after adding even more band members, they changed their name to "The Mugwumps". The Mugwumps soon broke up also due to insolvency. The Mamas & the Papas song "Creeque Alley" briefly outlines this history. Yanovsky went on to join The Lovin' Spoonful with John Sebastian. About this time, John Phillips' new band, "The New Journeymen," needed a replacement for tenor Marshall Brickman. Brickman had left the folk trio to pursue a career in television writing, and the group needed a quick replacement for their remaining tour dates. Doherty, then unemployed, filled the opening. After the New Journeymen called it quits as a band in early 1965, Elliot was invited into the formation of a new band, which became "The Magic Cyrcle." Six months later in September 1965, the group signed a recording contract with Dunhill Records. Changing their name to The Mamas & the Papas, the band soon began to record their debut album, If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears.

Cynthia Steljes

Oboist and founding member of Quartetto Gelato passed on December 29th 2006 after a heroic battle with pleural mesothelioma, a rare form of asbestos related lung cancer. Cynthia Steljes (oboe, English horn) displayed not only “breathtaking virtuosity” (Chicago Tribune) but also played “with tremendous expression and grace” (Milwaukee Journal). Cynthia appeared often as a guest soloist with chamber ensembles and orchestras. Cynthia was a special soul whose contributions to the arts and to the lives of all who knew her were too many to count. She will be missed by all and words cannot begin to describe the blessing that we feel to have had her in our lives. Peter De Sotto has made a steadfast promise to his beloved Cynthia that he will continue to enthusiastically tour Quartetto Gelato in her honor. He will care for and nurture Cynthia’s legacy so that it will continue to grow to the heights that Cynthia dreamed of. As Quartetto Gelato looks forward, they look back at Cynthia’s impact on this industry with tremendous awe and a special respect. Cynthia was about joy and light and “sweet toughness”. We continue to revel in the wonderful artistry and energy of this amazing woman!

Jay Alter

Died October 17, 2014. Percussion, Drum Kit. Joined September 3, 1967. Life Member

Murray Adaskin

(March 28, 1906 – May 6, 2002) was a Toronto-born Canadian violinist, composer, conductor and teacher. After playing violin with a band, he studied composition and became the director of the Music department of the University of Saskatchewan. Many of his compositions were written while in Victoria after his retirement. Born in Toronto, Ontario,[2] to Jewish Latvian immigrant parents who raised their four children to become persevering kids, Adaskin studied the violin with Alexander Chuhaldin at the Toronto Conservatory of Music. He began his career playing the violin in silent film presentations in his native city. Afterwards, he was a violinist with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra from 1923 to 1936. He married his first wife, soprano Frances James, around that time. From 1938 to 1952 he was with the Royal York Hotel trio. By 38 years of age, he studied for seven years with John Weinzweig to become a composer. Other composers he studied with include Charles Jones and Darius Milhaud. He was head of the Department of Music at the University of Saskatchewan from 1952 to 1966, including four years as conductor of the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra. He then became the Composer-in-Residence until 1972, the first position of its type ever created at a Canadian university. Among his notable pupils were composers Boyd McDonald, Paul Pedersen, Rodney Sharman and Timothy Williams; and violinist Andrew Dawes. By 1972, he retired to Victoria where he started composing more than half his total of 130 compositions.

George Zaduban

Died December 29, 2003. PIANO & CELESTE/ORGAN/ARRANGER/COMPOSER/CONDUCTOR. Joined April 11 1958. Life Member

Zalman "Zal" Yanovsky

(December 19, 1944 – December 13, 2002) was a Canadian rock musician. Born in Toronto, he was the son of political cartoonist Avrom Yanovsky. He played lead guitar and sang for the Lovin' Spoonful, a rock band which he founded with John Sebastian in 1964. According to Sebastian, "He could play like Elmore James, he could play like Floyd Cramer, he could play like Chuck Berry. He could play like all these people, yet he still had his own overpowering personality. Out of this we could, I thought, craft something with real flexibility." He was married to actress Jackie Burroughs, with whom he had one daughter, Zoe. One of the early rock and roll performers to wear a cowboy hat, and fringed "Davy Crockett" style clothing, Zal helped set the trend followed by such 1960s performers as Sonny Bono, Johnny Rivers and David Crosby. Mostly self-taught, he began his musical career playing folk music coffee houses in Toronto. He lived on a kibbutz in Israel for a short time before returning to Canada. He teamed with fellow Canadian Denny Doherty in the Halifax Three. The two joined Cass Elliot in the Mugwumps, a group made famous by Doherty's & Cass's later group the Mamas & the Papas in the song "Creeque Alley". It was at this time he met John Sebastian and they formed the Lovin' Spoonful with Steve Boone and Joe Butler. In 1967, he was arrested in the United States on a marijuana-related charge. In exchange for not being deported, Yanovsky gave up the name of his dealer, and as a consequence was ostracized by the music community. Returning to his native Canada, he recorded a solo album Alive and Well in Argentina (and Loving Every Minute of It). Buddah Records released the album in the U.S. in 1968, along with a single that did not appear on the album, "As Long As You're Here". The single (in which the B-side was the same track without vocals and recorded backwards) just missed the Billboard Hot 100, but fared a little better in Cashbox, peaking at #73. Kama Sutra Records reissued the album in 1971 with a completely different cover and inclusion of "As Long As You're Here". While a member of Kris Kristofferson's backing band at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970, he made a brief reunion with John Sebastian; Sebastian had been (apparently) unaware of Yanovsky's presence, and was made aware of that by a message passed through the crowd, written on a toilet roll. He also appeared in the Off-Broadway show "National Lampoon's Lemmings" at New York's Village Gate. Although not an original cast member, he contributed a musical number "Nirvana Banana", a Donovan parody.

John Harvey Wyre

(17 May 1941 – 31 October 2006) was a U.S.-born Canadian percussionist, composer, and music educator. He worked as percussionist with a number of important orchestras in North America, notably serving for many years as the principal timpanist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He was a founding member of the percussion ensemble Nexus, with which he performed for over 30 years. He was also Artistic Director of World Drums with whom he organized and directed performances at several major international events. His music compositions have been performed by ensembles throughout the world, including the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the CBC Radio Orchestra, and the Japan Philharmonic among others.Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Wyre began studying the percussion at age 15 with Fred Hinger, a percussionist with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He remained Hinger's student until 1959 when he entered the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester. He studied under William Street at Eastman, earning a Bachelor of Music there in 1964. Wyre began his performance career as a percussionist with the Oklahoma City Symphony Orchestra in 1964-1965 and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in 1965-1966. He then immigrated to Canada to become a timpanist with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, serving in that capacity from 1966–1971 and again from 1975-1981. In 1971 he co-founded the percussion ensemble Nexus with whom he remained active until 2002. He also performed frequently at the New Music Concerts beginning in 1972. He became a naturalized Canadian citizen in 1972. From 1985-1988, Wyre was the principal timpanist for the orchestra of the Canadian Opera Company. He was appointed to that same post with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1987, with whom he remained active up into 21st century. For many years he was Artistic director of World Drums, with whom he notably organized a performance at Expo 86 in Vancouver; a performance which was filmed under the direction of Niv Fichman and released by Rhombus Media on VHS. In 1989 he was principal percussionist for the Scotia Festival in Halifax. He also organized World Drum performances at the Toronto International Festival (1984), the 1988 Winter Olympics, and Expo 88 among other events. As a teacher, Wyre worked as an instructor for the National Youth Orchestra of Canada from 1967–1969 and served on the music faculty of the University of Toronto from 1971-1974. He died in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador at the age of 65.

EUGENE AMARO

(tenor saxophonist, alto saxophonist, flutist) was leader of his own Eugene Amaro Quartet, and long-time member of Rob McConnell and The Boss Brass. He also co-led the Sam Noto/Eugene Amaro Quintet,. and performed with the Ron Rully Sextet and Ian McDougall's Dectet in “Sound of Toronto Jazz” Concerts. Amaro passed away on March 23, 2010.

Robert "Bob" Homme

(March 8, 1919 – May 2, 2000) was an American-born television actor, best known as the host of The Friendly Giant, a popular Canadian children's television program from the 1950s through the 1980s, which was broadcast on CBC Television. Homme became a citizen of Canada in the early 1990s, holding dual U.S.-Canada citizenship, and was invested into the Order of Canada as a Member on November 2, 1998 in Grafton, Ontario. As Homme was too ill to travel, the Governor General came to him (instead of making Homme come to Rideau Hall where the award is usually bestowed), thus allowing him the postnominal C.M. Homme stood 5 foot, 11 inches tall.

BORIS GRMEK

Died November 2, 2015. GUITAR, ELECTRIC/PERCUSSION, LATIN/SAXOPHONE. Joined July 6 1973

GORDON EVANS

(alto and baritone saxophones, copyist) was born March 18, 1919. He was an original member of Jim Galloway’s Wee Big Band when it was formed in 1979, and as lead alto saxophonist is still, by Galloway’s description the “anchor man” in that 17-piece band. Evans is a veteran of a number of famed big bands including those led by Billy May and Sam Donahue. He was a featured soloist on the recently-released Blue Reverie (Sackville) CD, the last CD recorded at the Montreal Bistro & Jazz Club in Toronto before its close. He performed in “Sound of Toronto Jazz” concerts with Jim Galloway’s Wee Big Band on February 12, 1979, and as Musical Director for Reeds and Rhythm on January 12, 1981

Frances Marr Adaskin

(August 23, 1900 – March 8, 2001) was a Canadian pianist. She began playing the piano at an early age under the direction of Whitney Scherer. She also studied at the Alma College (St. Thomas, Ontario) under Thomas Martin and eventually in Toronto at the Conservatory of Music under Paul Wells. In 1923, her first engagement as a professional accompanist was with violinist Harry Adaskin. She married him in 1926. She travelled with her husband, until 1938, on tour of North America and Europe with the Hart House String Quartet. Adaskin was also an entertainment writer (mostly of short stories). Many of her works were published in Saturday Night Magazine throughout the 1940s. She also completed her unpublished memoirs, titled Fran's Scrapbook: A Talking Dream. National Honours Adaskin received the Order of Canada honour on December 15, 1976. It was awarded for "...a life devoted to music as accompanist of international repute and as a soloist and teacher..." She was invested as a Member on April 29, 1977. Adaskin died in Vancouver on March 8, 2001.

Reid Diamond

Died: February 17, 2001. Bassist with seminal Canadian instrumental rock band Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet, died February 17 after a six-year battle with brain cancer, which had been in remission until last December when he was diagnosed as terminal. He was 42. The band's tune "Having an Average Weekend" was the theme song for the Kids in the Hall comedy series.

Antonín Kubálek

(November 8, 1935 – January 18, 2011) was a Czech-Canadian classical pianist. Kubálek was born in Libkovice, Most District, Czechoslovakia and studied in Prague with Czech pianist František Maxián. He emigrated to Canada in 1968 and settled in Toronto. During his time in Canada, Kubálek performed in solo, chamber and orchestral concerts. Antonin Kubálek’s artistry and musicianship commanded respect and admiration from audiences and critics internationally. He received three standing ovations following his performance in the Rudolfinum at the 2002 Prague Spring Festival. In November 2002, Kubálek was recognized by the Czech Music Council with a UNESCO honorary award. His exceptionally wide repertoire contained Czech and Canadian music, including contemporary pieces; but also romantic works by Chopin, Schumann, and especially Brahms, for which he is considered to be one of the foremost performers of recent times. A respected educator, Kubálek served on the faculties of The Royal Conservatory of Music, University of Toronto, York University, the Prague Conservatory and the Prague Academy of Performing Arts. In 2003 he established an annual festival in Zlaté Hory in the Czech Republic, The International Kubalek Piano Courses, for young pianists. Among his most important pupils of that time were Richard Pohl and Birute Bizeviciute. Kubálek was twice nominated for the Juno Award in Canada. He died in Prague after surgery for a brain tumour.

Arlene Pach (Nimmons)

Pianist, teacher, b Kamloops, BC, 26 May 1928, d Fredericton, 2 Mar 2000; ATCM 1945; BA philosophy (British Columbia) 1949, honorary LL D (Saint Thomas) 1988, honorary D LITT (New Brunswick) 1993. A sister of Phil Nimmons, she studied with Boris Roubakine at the TCM. After her 1947 debut with the Vancouver Junior Symphony and CBC Vancouver recitals 1948-9, she performed extensively in Toronto and throughout Ontario 1951-5 and premiered works by Harry Freedman, Kenneth Peacock, and Phil Nimmons. Her early chamber music activity included appearances with flautist Nicholas Fiore, violinist Steven Staryk, and the Summerhill Woodwind Quintet. Married in 1954 to violinist Joseph Pach, she founded with him the Duo Pach in 1960. The Duo Pach received a Canada Council fellowship 1961 and made their London and BBC debuts and performed in Europe. They made several tours in Canada and performed on CBC radio and television, as well as at Expo 67. Appointed a resident artist of the University of New Brunswick in 1964, Pach was pianist with the Brunswick String Quartet in 1972 when it performed as a piano quartet, and was co-founder and artistic director 1966-83 of the annual University of New Brunswick Chamber Music and All That Jazz Festival. Pach taught at the University of New Brunswick, the Banff SFA, and the Institute de Ribaupierre (Lausanne, Switzerland). An experienced lecturer, she also appeared on the CBC as music critic and commentator, and was columnist for the Vancouver Daily Province. Pach was vice-president 1980-8 of the Canadian Music Council. She and her husband remained at the University of New Brunswick as resident musicians until 1993; they continued to record, and to perform on CBC radio and in concert through the 1990s. The Vancouver Sun has called the Duo Pach "a splendid and well-matched team." The RCM offers the Arlene Nimmons Pach Endowment Fund.

CLIFFORD (KID) BASTIEN

(trumpeter, banjoist, trombonist, pianist, drummer) was born in London England's East End in 1937. He died February 8, 2003 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was known throughout North America as a great Canadian jazz musician and leader of Kid Bastien and The Happy Pals, a New Orleans style jazz band that was a fixture at festivals and jazz cruises for over two decades, celebrating their 25th anniversary in 1993 at Grossman’s Tavern in Toronto where the band was a mainstay, playing every Saturday right up until and even after Bastien’s death. Kid Bastien immigrated to Canada in 1962 after a stint in New Orleans. There, at the age of 19, he heCLIFFORD (KID) BASTIEN (trompettiste, banjoïste, tromboniste, pianiste, batteur) est né dans le quartier East End de Londres, en Angleterre, en 1937. Il est mort le 8 février 2003 à Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Gordon Kenneth

Accordionist, pianist, composer; b. Winnipeg, Manitoba, 3 August 1931. Gordie began his musical journey in the early stages of his life. At the age of five, he appeared as an act at the Beacon Vaudeville Theatre in Winnipeg, and continued to do the circuit from 1936 to 1941. Performances included, the Orpheum, Walker, Odeon and Playhouse Theatres. From 1941 to 1945, Gordie played many Army camp tours in Western Canada, as well as numerous radio shows on private and CBC coast-to-coast network presentations. From 1945-1949 he performed in Winnipeg nightclubs such as the Don Carlos Casino, The Highwayman, The Flame and the Copacabana, and accompanied Hank Snow for several months at Patterson's Barn.

JOHNNY BARBALINARDO LOMBARDI

Was born December 4, l9l5, in a tenement house situated on the street called Trinity Square, a street still standing behind the Eaton Centre in the heart of downtown Toronto. Johnny studied music as a child. He taught himself to play the harmonica, the bugle and the trumpet, winning several gold medals. Between the age of nine and ten Johnny set up a mobile shoeshine stand, very near the now non-existent SHEA’s Theatre in downtown Toronto. When there were no shoes to shine, he would love to saunter over to the theatre and, hopefully, as only a child can hope, catch a glimpse of the performers appearing on stage at the time. If he was really lucky, and he often was, he even got a chance to see the acts in their entirety … when a kind soul chose to give a kid a break. It was during the hungry 1930s that Johnny, at age 10, decided to study music through the charitable and good graces of the Boys “K” Club and Columbus Boys Club, which were service clubs for underprivileged kids. “Ninety percent of the membership in the clubs was ethnic … come to think of it, the ethnics must have had a monopoly on non-privilege,” says Johnny, who is forever grateful to these clubs who gave a kid from the Ward a break. His musical studies paid off and he joined the Club’s Bugle and Harmonica Bands, later forming a boys’ club orchestra playing for coffee and sandwiches. He was also busy that year from sundown Friday night to sundown Saturday, lighting gas lights, burners and stoves for the orthodox Jewish families living in his neighbourhood and beyond, for which he would very often receive a piece of homemade honeycake as a reward. At age twelve Johnny’s first after-school job was as a folder and addresser for the then Italian weekly “La Tribuna Italo-Canadese,” where he earned $2.00 per week for his efforts. He felt he could do more and graduated shortly thereafter to the position of back-page editor, writing his own column entitled “The Snipper-Snooper,” a la Walter Winchell. When famous dance bands, led by Frank Busseri, Romanelli and others, did not invite Johnny to join them because he was too young, the musically-drawn Johnny, at age l4, formed his own band. For five years he led eight “star” musicians with a repertoire of twenty songs, the original top 20 format. The band played all the hot spots in town (sometimes known as “buckets of blood”) — parish halls, above pool rooms, small clubs, frontroom house parties, warehouses, garages — anywhere you could dance, anytime, to the top 20 tunes. Whenever Johnny got to the boxoffice before the impresario at big dances, he would be paid cash. Otherwise, he’d end up being paid in coffee and sandwiches.

George Francis Crum

(26 October 1926 - 8 September 2007) was the first conductor of the National Ballet of Canada and an accomplished pianist, vocal coach and musical arranger. Crum's debut as a conductor was with The Royal Conservatory of Music's opera division in 1948 in their production of Faust. Crum was the company's first chorus master, and stayed with the company as coach and assistant conductor for 3 years until 1951. He also taught on the piano faculty at the conservatory, notably instructing composer Hugh Davidson. During this time, Crum also worked with the Opera Nacional de Centro-America in Guatemala (1949-1950). George Crum later worked with many companies in many roles including chorus master of the CBC radio opera throughout the 1950s and as the first conductor of the newly formed National Ballet of Canada at the invitation of founder Celia Franca. With the National Ballet, he conducted many notable performances, including productions Giselle and Orpheus in the Underworld. During his time with the National Ballet, Crum had a myriad of other ventures. At the 1952 Salzburg Festival, he coached opera under Wilhelm Furtwängler. In May 1953, he conducted the CBC Opera Company in Don Giovanni, marking the first North-American full-length opera telecast. He also conducted at the opening of the National Arts Centre in 1969. Crum guest conducted in many international venues including the United States, Japan, and various stages throughout Europe. Crum was named Music Director Emeritus at the National Ballet after his retirement from the company in 1984.[2] Though this was not the end of his involvement with the National Ballet of Canada. He guest conducted on numerous occasions, including some of the gala performances celebrating the company's 25th anniversary and for the production Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet in 1989, prima ballerina Veronica Tennant's farewell performance. He also prepared musical arrangements and guest-conducted for other ballet companies including the New York's Joffrey Ballet and Mexico City's Ballet Teatro.

Oskar Morawetz

(January 17, 1917 – June 13, 2007) was a Canadian composer. Morawetz was born in Světlá nad Sázavou, Bohemia (now in the Czech Republic). He studied piano and theory in Prague and, following the Nazi takeover of his country in 1938, studied in Vienna and Paris, always staying one step ahead of the invading Nazis. At an early age he developed the ability to sight-read orchestral scores and at the age of 19 he was recommended by George Szell for the assistant conductor's post with the Prague Opera. In 1940 he left Europe for Canada and since that time he established himself as one of Canada's leading and most frequently performed composers.

Paul Lewis Quarrington

(July 22, 1953 – January 21, 2010) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, musician and educator. Born in Toronto as the middle of three sons in the family of four of Bruce Quarrington, he was raised in the suburb of Don Mills and studied at the University of Toronto but dropped out after less than two years of study. He wrote his early novels while working as the bass player for the group Joe Hall and the Continental Drift and as the guitar accompanist for Cathy Stewart, a Canadian singer who was popular at the time. One of his novels, Whale Music, was called "the greatest rock'n'roll novel ever written" by Penthouse magazine. His non-fiction books and journalism were also highly regarded – he earned or co-earned more than 20 gold awards for his magazine articles alone.] Quarrington's most consistent musical colleague has been Martin Worthy; their friendship began in high school. He was also a high school friend of songwriter Dan Hill, with whom he reunited toward the end of his life to collaborate on musical projects. Quarrington collaborated with many artists (a defining element of his overall body of work) who achieved recognition in their respective disciplines. These include Nino Ricci, Joseph Kertes, Dave Bidini, Jake MacDonald, John Krizanc, Christina Jennings, Judith Keenan, Michael Burke, Peter Lynch, Ron Mann, Robert Lantos and many others.

Haydain Neale

(September 3, 1970 – November 22, 2009) was a Canadian singer-songwriter from Hamilton, Ontario. He was best known as the lead singer of Juno Award-winning band Jacksoul. Neale also served on the faculty of the Humber College Summer Songwriting Workshop and as president of the Songwriters Association of Canada.

Mary Syme Linholm

Died September 23, 2009 - Obtained her Associate and Licentiate degrees in piano when she entered McMaster University at seventeen. While attending McMaster she continued music studies in Toronto. After graduation, came five years of advanced study in New York with the eminent pianist, Mieczyslav Horszowski, culminating in her New York Town Hall debut. An international concert career followed, with hundreds of recitals, radio and T.V. performances and appearances with major symphony orchestras. Mary had written more than 500 scripts - educational programs, dramas and films. She has written for Southam Press and the United Church of Canada and has won five writer awards at New York's American Film Festival. Mary had composed more than 300 musical works - instrumental, songs, choir selections - with performances around the world. She composed music for The Friendly Giant, Sesame Street and the classic film, A Child's Christmas in Wales, for which she was also music consultant. A recording of her music was graciously accepted by the Queen for young Prince Andrew - an unusual honour.

Milan Kymlicka

(15 May 1936 – 9 October 2008) was a Czechoslovakian and Canadian arranger, composer and conductor. He was best known for his composition of film and television scores, including those for the animated television series Rupert and Babar and the live-action television series Lassie and Little Men. He received numerous awards for his work, including a Genie Award in 1996 for his work on Margaret's Museum. Born in Louny, Kymlicka earned degrees from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and the Prague Conservatory. At the latter institution he was a pupil of Emil Hlobil. He began his work as a composer in his native country and by 1967 he had produced 20 film scores, a ballet, a cello concerto, several works for solo piano, and a number of string quartets. After Prague Spring in 1968 Kymlicka emigrated to Canada where he settled in Toronto. By the early 1970s he was one of the leading studio arranger/conductors at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In 1974, Kymlicka became a naturalized Canadian citizen. He remained busy as a composer, arranger, and conductor for film, television, and radio up until his death in Toronto in 2008. Among his last released works was also "Závoj tkaný touhami" (originally by Tanita Tikaram), arranged for the album Ohrožený druh (2008).

Oscar Emmanuel Peterson

(August 15, 1925 – December 23, 2007) was a Canadian jazz pianist and composer. He was called the "Maharaja of the keyboard" by Duke Ellington, but simply "O.P." by his friends. He released over 200 recordings, won eight Grammy Awards, and received numerous other awards and honours. He is considered to have been one of the greatest jazz pianists, and played thousands of concerts worldwide in a career lasting more than 60 years.

Robert Raines

Maestro Robert Raines’ love for music transcended everything. Raines, 64, conductor, CEO and chief artistic director of the Brampton Symphony Orchestra (BSO), died Saturday, April, 16, 2011 at North York General Hospital from esophageal cancer. “Robert was one of the great musical philanthropists of our time,” said Michael Todd, president of the BSO board of directors and a close friend of Raines. “He gave opportunities to many of the young and upcoming talent from Brampton– both on the local stage at the Rose Theatre and as well as on the international stage at Miami beach. At his core, he was a community builder and a master teacher.” Raines’ no-nonsense exterior harboured a compassionate heart and a passion for his craft. He was the force and architect behind an art and cultural initiative between Brampton and its sister city Miami. Raines– who was the conductor of BSO for nine seasons– was a natural teacher who nurtured a deep love for not just the music, but the musicians and the community, said Todd. A huge fan of Jackie Gleason– an American comedian, actor and musician– Raines believed and embraced Gleason’s motto- 'And away we go.' Maestro Raines’ career, spanning some 50 years, kick-started with $1.25 music lessons. He was responsible for creating various initiatives, including a summer day camp and city-wide Strings for Youth classes in collaboration with Brampton Neighbourhood Resource Centre. Through this program, children from disadvantaged homes in Brampton receive music lessons, instruments and books free of cost. Last year, when BSO faced a possible shut-down because of a funding crisis, Raines fought hard for some two-dozen musicians to have full-season contracts. Before his stint at the BSO, Raines conducted the Cathedral Bluffs Symphony Orchestra, the Halton Youth Symphony and created the Romantic Evening Concert Series in Toronto. He was also a professor of music at Dalhousie University and the chair of Acadia University’s String Department in Nova Scotia. But the person who inspired him, and in many respects shaped his destiny, was none other than Arthur Fiedler, the legendary conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra. When in college, Raines caught a brief and almost tantalizing glimpse of his own future when working as a wine steward for the Boston Pops Orchestra. At that time, the young Raines, often watched his idol Fiedler from the sidelines. “As a wine steward, I would open champagne bottles during the concert and talk to many people from the audience,” he recalled. “The tickets weren’t expensive then. They were 50 cents. I often wondered, just how many things do we have (in life) that inspire or make the average person happy ? To me, Arthur Fiedler was doing just that with the Boston Pops Orchestra.”

Terry Clements

Terry Clements (July 22, 1947 - February 20, 2011), a Detroit native who played guitar for Gordon Lightfoot for 40 years, has died. He was 63. Clements died on Sunday, 10 days after suffering a stroke. A posting on Lightfoot's official website acknowledged Clements as "an integral part of the signature Lightfoot sound." He plays the haunting guitar solo on The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and is a dexterous guitar picker on Carefree Highway. The two created more than 15 albums together. They met in 1970 while Clements was working on the soundtrack to an early Burt Reynolds movie. When Lightfoot's then-partner Red Shea wanted to get off the road, Lightfoot called Clements to ask him to join the band. He eventually accepted and the two played together since 1971. "He was always so creative, yet never repetitive, his style inhabiting the music, never seeming to be added on as an afterthought, but instead always feeling like a part of the fabric of the song," said a tribute on Lightfoot's website. Clements was born in Detroit and grew up in California, before joining the navy, where he hurt his hand. He always played with a flat pick and his ring finger. In the 1960s he wrote and arranged songs for a group called Golden Sunflower, managed by Lou Adler, who also steered the careers of the Mamas & the Papas and Carole King. He then got into working on film scores, where he met Lightfoot. "Gord is personable and more down to earth than a lot of people I've been around, people who believe their own hype and have heads the size of watermelons," said Clements. "Gord doesn't have many airs about him. I guess to be in the business this long, you have some sense of decorum." He said Lightfoot often left it to him to hit on the right sound for a song. "If Gord has specific idea, he'll tell me. Otherwise, it's, 'Come up with something,'" Clements said.

Paul Anthony Danesi

Christopher Dedrick

Died Friday, August 6, 2010. Chris pursued studies in music at the State University of New York at Fredonia, and later at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City where he majored in trumpet and music theory. He studied extensively with Mel Broiles, the great NY trumpet player and teacher. Chris became the chief arranger for the Airmen of Note, Washington's Air Force Big Band during his military service during the Vietnam War. During this time he and his siblings formed a pop vocal group called The Free Design, which appeared on Johnny Carson, Mike Douglas and many other shows including Nixon's Inauguration Ball, going on to create 8 albums. He also contributed as writer, player and producer to recording sessions for many artists, including Peter, Paul and Mary, Melissa Manchester, Barry Mann, and Simon and Garfunkel with James Taylor. In 1972 Chris moved to Canada and began writing for film and television, writing the music for over 200 episodes, shows and films. He is the recipient of 4 Gemini Awards and 16 nominations, a Genie Award, 2 Golden Reel Awards, a Hot Docs Award and a Blizzard Award. He posthumously was awarded with the Caledon Walk of Fame in 2012 on the Trans Canada Trail. Chris wrote chamber, symphonic and choral works including "Entre Nous" commissioned and performed by the Canadian Brass and Principal Brass of the New York Philharmonic premiered at the Lincoln Center in NYC, "Awakenings", a double concerto for violin and viola with full orchestra, and "Joy Sounds" for the Elmer Iseler Singers. Other works have been performed by the Amadeus Choir, the Bach-Elgar Choir, the Bach Children's Chorus, The Chautauqua Children's Choir, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. He wrote many pieces for the Star-Scape Singers including a 90 minute a cappella Mass called the Fire Mass which was performed at Carnegie Hall and Roy Thomson Hall as well as in Europe. He wrote many original pieces and arrangements for the Canadian Brass, the True North Brass and the Menlo Brass.

Leo Spellman

On Sept. 3, Leo Spellman sat in a sold-out audience at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre listening to his composition Rhapsody 1939-1945, playing the melody on his knees. He was nine months short of his 100th birthday, and he had been waiting for this moment for more than 60 years. The hands that tapped out the music in the air had been playing piano every day for more than nine decades, except during the Second World War, when Spellman and his wife hid in the forests of Poland under constant fear of capture, and again just after the war – when he took a bullet in the arm. That evening in September, as Spellman sat surrounded by children and grandchildren, was the culmination of an extraordinary journey that began in a German camp for displaced persons and ended, via the help of a famous Canadian musician and Spellman’s own famous cousin, on the shores of Lake Ontario. Leo Spellman died of heart failure on Nov. 24, but two months before he received some of the recognition that, on his darkest days, he felt had been denied him in his beloved adopted country. “He was a Canadian who should be more celebrated,” said Paul Hoffert, the award-winning Canadian musician and composer who helped Mr. Spellman record Rhapsody, and who conducted it that night at Harbourfront. In many ways, Spellman’s story mirrors that of his cousin, musician and composer Wladyslaw Szpilman, whose life was turned into the Oscar-winning film The Pianist by Roman Polanski. Both were talented men who lost close family in the Holocaust, and survived in unimaginably difficult circumstances by hiding under the noses of the Nazis. Both coped with their experiences by writing works that lay hidden, too painful to recall, and were rediscovered long after the war: Spellman’s Rhapsody 1939-1945 sat unplayed in a suitcase in his Toronto garage for decades, and Szpilman’s memoir was re-released to great acclaim in 1998. At the beginning of the war, Leo tried to convince Wladyslaw to escape Poland with him; six decades later, Szpilman would be instrumental in bringing his cousin’s Rhapsody to light. Playing piano provided the most enduring thread through Spellman’s life, from a childhood in Ostrowiec, Poland, through decades as the leader of a popular Toronto dance band. “He had the most extraordinary musical spirit,” said his daughter, Helene Shifman. “He played every day.” Born into a family of celebrated musicians on April 18, 1913, Leo Spellman was taught by his father, Reuven, and was playing proficiently by the age of four. In an interview with Moses Znaimer this year, he described himself as a “wild child. … I was the first Jewish boy who had a bicycle in Ostrowiec.” By age nine, he was playing piano in a silent-picture house after school, though the arrival of talkies doomed that career. He transferred his talents to a travelling band. Shortly after the war broke out, Spellman married his childhood love, Mary (known as Mania). They would remain together until her death in 2006. He considered trying to flee Ostrowiec, and urged Wladyslaw, a pianist on Polish Radio in Warsaw, to come with him. “I said to my cousin Wladek, ‘Let’s run away. Don’t you see what’s going on?’ ” he recalls in The Lost Rhapsody of Leo Spellman, a documentary about him being made by Paul Hoffert’s son, David. “But he was afraid. He said, ‘What am I going to do? Where will I go?’” Spellman, who was doing surreptitious work for the Polish partisans, ended up organizing an orchestra in the Ostrowiec ghetto, and taught accordion to one of the German guards. When the guard heard Jews were being rounded up, he got word to Leo and Mania, helping them to escape. They fled to the forest, where they lived for months. Several members of their families, including some of Spellman’s seven siblings, were sent to camps and killed. Into their lives came an unlikely ally, Henryk Wronski, a 21-year-old Polish student with an apartment in Ostrowiec where he sheltered the couple for 18 torturous months. “We were freezing, dying for food,” Spellman says in an interview for the documentary. “We couldn’t speak in case the neighbours would hear.” Toward the end of the war, as the Soviet army advanced, fleeing German soldiers broke the lock on the apartment door and took refuge. For days, Leo and Mania hid in a closet with the soldiers only feet away. Hunger forced Leo to take a wild risk, and he crept out of the closet one night to steal some of the soldiers’ bread. In the morning, they began to fight, accusing each other of the theft. Eventually they left, and Leo and Mania were free. Having survived the war, Leo and Mania faced one final, horrible chapter: As they took shelter in a house with Spellman’s sister Chana, whom he called “a second mother,” thieves broke in and began shooting. One of Chana’s children was murdered, and Spellman was shot. It would take him many months of strenuous practice before he could play the piano properly again. At Furstenfeldbruck, a camp for displaced persons in Germany, Spellman began composing his Rhapsody in 1947. It comprised three sections: The first, a loud and martial passage meant to recall the brutal noise of war; the second, a quieter, piano-heavy passage conveying suffering; and the third, an upbeat, joyful movement. “We are liberated,” Spellman explained, “and we start to sing Jewish life songs.” “I always dreamed that I have to survive the Nazis, Hitler, to tell the world what happened,” he told David Hoffert. “I always say to myself, ‘How did I survive this? I have no answer.’” Listening to the piece was painful for Spellman, and when he and Mania and their young son Les immigrated to Canada in 1948, he put it away in his garage and moved on. (Along with a new life, the couple was given a new name, and their family surname Szpilman was anglicized for a Canadian palate.) Leo was reunited with his sister Chana, who had also moved to Toronto and remarried. Daughter Helene arrived in 1950. After a brief stint as a dishwasher, Leo found his way back to a piano, founding the popular Leo Spellman Orchestra, which played more than 1,000 weddings and parties over the decades. He also had a successful sideline in property development. Music and family were the constants in his life. He was charming and strong-willed but sometimes bossy, making the party guests when Helene turned 60 sing Happy Birthday a second time because they had been off-key. In the 1990s, Wronski, the student who had sheltered the Spellmans, tracked them down and they had an emotional reunion in Toronto. But Spellman never opened the suitcase in his garage. Then, in the late 1990s, the Holocaust Museum in Washington approached Szpilman about providing some music for Life Reborn, a conference for survivors and their families. “I’ve never written Jewish music,” he told them. “But my cousin Leo in Toronto did. You should try him.” In his garage, he found the work he had written half a century earlier, dusted it off and took it to Washington, where it had its North American premiere at the conference in January, 2000. “The reception was amazing,” says Shifman, “and it meant so much to my father.” Over the next few years, Rhapsody 1939-1945 was performed in the United States to equally enthusiastic receptions, but never in Canada. The fact that his composition had received no attention in his own country rankled Spellman somewhat, but he didn’t dwell on it: An active man – he drove until he was 97 and lived on his own for two years after that – he had family and music to keep him busy. (He also spoke on the phone to Chana, now 105, several times a day.) Still, his family – two children and seven grandchildren – nagged him to record Rhapsody, and to have it performed in Canada. Spellman finally caved and three years ago reached out to Hoffert, the award-winning composer and co-founder of the band Lighthouse, to see if his Holocaust composition might be captured for posterity. “He made me audition,” Hoffert says with a laugh. “He wanted to make sure he had the right guy. I understood that. I have high standards, too – you should if you’re an artist and composer.” Hoffert realized, when he sat down to listen to Spellman play, what an incredible story the music was telling, and he was surprised it wasn’t better known. “I thought how awful it was that here was this person who was a great artist, and nobody knew that he’d written major pieces of music in the 20th century.” He gathered musicians and, following the precise and rigorous instructions of its composer, began to record. (Spellman didn’t play on the CD, but was more than happy to provide directions from the sidelines.) Along with the record, Paul Hoffert and his wife, Brenda, began to make the documentary about Spellman’s life, although speaking about the war was difficult. At one point, he wipes tears from his face with a handkerchief: “When I listen to the Rhapsody, I’m crying, because it reminds me of how I made this. I remember those years.” Spellman’s health began to fail only in recent months. In September, he was well enough to attend the Canadian premiere of his composition, held as part of the Ashkenaz Festival in Toronto. After the concert, people lined up to buy the CD. “My father’s Rhapsody captured the enormity of this tragedy, and his own personal sense of sorrow and loss,” Shifman says. “It became his healing.”

Nancy Colleen Gildner

- January 29, 1955 - September 14, 2012 In Wiesbaden, Germany, on Friday, September 14, 2012. Nancy was the loving wife of Cordula Hacke of Wiesbaden. Dear daughter of Colleen and the late Earl Gildner of Tavistock, Ont., sister of David Gildner and his wife Pam of Bright's Grove, Ont., Jane Gildner of Oakville, and aunt of Kaitlin and Andre Freitag of Oakville. Nancy was born in Kitchener and attended Kitchener Collegiate Institute and Huron Park Secondary School in Woodstock. She graduated from the University of Western Ontario in Music and played and taught Trumpet in Canada and Germany. Cremation has taken place.

Sy Sylver

Sy Benlolo, known to the world as Sy Sylver, was a true rocker at heart. He started playing guitar at the age of 10. He played in several bands throughout his lifetime including Irock and Remedy. He was mostly influenced by Ace Frehley of KISS and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd to become a guitarist. It was the band KISS that introduced him to the rock and roll world. He was surely one of their biggest fans. The music business started shifting away from rock and roll when Sy realized that dance music was dominating the world. In the mid 1990's, Sy started hanging out at clubs that featured DJs. A thought came to him that a live musician accompanying the DJ would be something cooler to look at and could take the music to a different level. That is when Sy decided that person would be him. In 1997, Sy Sylver was born. Together with his friend and DJ, Mark S1 (Mark Soer), Sy performed at X-IT II EDEN in Toronto. They coined the collaboration as the "Club Rock Experience". After that, there was no stopping Sy Sylver. Within a few years, Sy became a legendary pioneer in the electronic music scene. He became a specialist in collaborating with DJs who played House/Progressive/Trance/Top 40 and Mash Up music. Most of his performances were improvised and on the fly. No matter what the DJ threw at him, Sy would find a way to play along and electrify the audience. His performances were so accurate and captivating that his audiences didn’t believe he was actually playing. Sy also worked in the studio producing some amazing dance music with various artists and producers. Just like his idol David Gilmour, you can always tell when you are hearing Sy's guitar. He always gave everything he touched his special rocky edge. Sy played all over the international club scene in cities such as New York, Las Vegas, Tel Aviv, Dubai, and Ibiza to name just a few. He played alongside world leading international DJs including Paul Oakenfold, Benny Baennassi, Tiesto, Mark S1, Yahel, Kaskade, Reflex Le Roque and many others. His performances in front of thousands at clubs in North America, the Middle East and Europe proved that the concept of a live guitarist free styling with a DJ was a force to be reckoned with and no one will be able to do it like Sy Sylver!!!!

Fraser Finlayson

When Fraser Finlayson passed away suddenly in August 2011, Canada lost a founding father of blues harmonica in this country. He was a renowned R&B and blues musician, singer and bandleader who was well respected in the music and art community. A member of various Toronto and international bands, he was a multi-disciplinary artist, writer, broadcaster, world traveller and supporter of the arts. Toronto`s music community will gather at Hugh`s Room on Nov.15th for a musical celebration of his life.

Dave McMurdo

DAVE McMURDO (trombonist, composer, arranger, conductor, teacher) was born March 4, 1944 in Isleworth, England, and passed away on June 13, 2011. He spent his early life in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada where he studied music at the University of British Columbia. It was there that he began composing music and playing in a variety of bands including the famed Bob Hales Big Band. In 1969, Dave moved to Toronto where he became a respected sideman with Rob McConnell and The Boss Brass, and lead trombone player in Nimmons 'n' Nine Plus Six. Internationally esteemed as leader of Juno Award-nominated The Dave McMurdo Jazz Orchestra (which Toronto Star Critic Geoff Chapman called 'Canada's leading big band') and The Dave McMurdo Quintet featuring Mike Malone, McMurdo is a powerhouse player and equally talented composer and arranger. As a jazz educator, Dave has been a full-time faculty member in the Music Department at Mohawk College since 1984. As a dedicated composer/ player/clinician, he participates in clinics, music festivals, and concerts across Canada and internationally throughout the year. In 1987 and 1988, he was awarded Canada Council Grants to study composition with the great Bob Brookmeyer in New York City. The Dave McMurdo Jazz Orchestra featuring Toronto's best players from its earliest beginnings, was created in 1988 and took off almost immediately. In 1991 the orchestra toured the (then) USSR. Since that time, they have recorded innumerable original compositions by other famous Canadian musicians including Mike Malone, Don Thompson, Reg Schwager, and Phil Nimmons on CD -- Live at the Montreal Bistro in 1992, Different Paths in 1994, Fire & Song in 1997, and Just For Now in 2002 -- all released by Sackville Recordings. The Toronto Star acclaimed Just for Now as one of 2002's Top 10 CDs. The Dave McMurdo Quintet featuring Mike Malone released their first CD entitled “99 Ways”, which the Quintet followed up with a successful tour of Canada's West Coast later that same year, and a series of concerts in Malaysia in 2001. 2008 saw the release of a live double CD of the Dave McMurdo Orchestra, “Nimmons and More”.

Nash the Slash

James Jeffrey "Jeff" Plewman (March 26, 1948 – May 10, 2014), better known by his stage name Nash the Slash, was a Canadian musician. A multi-instrumentalist, he was known primarily for playing the electric violin and mandolin, as well as the harmonica, keyboards, glockenspiel, and other instruments (sometimes described as "devices" on album notes).[citation needed] Nash worked as a solo artist beginning in 1975; founding the progressive rock band FM in 1976. Soon after releasing the band's first album, Black Noise, in 1977, he left the band; he resumed his solo career in 1978 (it was not until after Nash's departure that the album was widely promoted, eventually charting and receiving a gold record award). He rejoined FM from 1983 to 1996, concurrent with his solo work. Nash's music covers an eclectic range, varying from instrumental—mood-setting music, to rock and pop music with vocals. In addition to giving concert performances, he has composed and performed soundtrack music for silent films, presenting these works live in movie theatres to accompany screenings of the films. Another venue for his music is in performances to accompany the viewing of paintings by surrealist painter Robert Vanderhorst, an audiovisual collaboration, which took place in 1978 and again in 2004.

Robert W. Oades

Trumpeter, teacher, administrator, Robert William Oades was born in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England on August 7, 1924. He studied at the Royal Military School of Music from 1945 to 1946 and at the Royal Academy of Music with George Eskdale between 1950 ­and 1953, and also studied privately with Ernest Hall. He moved to Toronto in 1954 where he worked as an extra player for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Pro Arte Orchestra under Victor Di Bello, the Hart House Orchestra, and in orchestras for the Canadian Opera Company and the National Ballet of Canada. He was soloist with several choirs, among them the Festival Singers of Canada and the Orpheus Choir of Toronto. He founded the Gabrieli Brass Ensemble, whose 4 to 12 members performed in the late 1960’s in Toronto churches. After winning a Toronto Bach Society scholarship in 1960, he studied baroque trumpet from 1960 to 1962 in Boston with Armando Ghitalla. In 1968, under a Canada Council scholarship he studied with Edward Tarr in Basel, Switzerland. Mr. Oades played from 1963 to 1969 with the Stratford Festival Orchestra, for which he was also personnel manager in 1968, and he coordinated its annual chamber music workshop between 1966 and 1969. He moved to Ottawa in 1969 to join the National Arts Centre Orchestra. He resigned in 1974 to concentrate on teaching, but continued to appear frequently as a soloist in Ottawa. He performed Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks on baroque trumpet in Basel with the Edward Tarr Brass Ensemble. He also played with the 12-­member Ottawa-­based Classical Brass from 1982 to 1984, which performed on CBC radio and toured regionally. Mr. Oades began to teach privately in Toronto in 1954. He taught at the Brodie School of Music and Modern Dance between 1965 and 1968, gave master classes for the North York Board of Education (Toronto) from 1965 to 1969, and taught for the Association of Hebrew Schools of Toronto between 1966 and 1969. He began teaching trumpet at the University of Ottawa in 1966 and at Queen’s University in 1969; he continued to teach at both universities in 1991. He was guest professor at the University of Michigan in 1986. Highly regarded as a teacher, Mr. Oades frequently acted as an adjudicator and examiner. Mr. Oades performed on recordings of Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks with the Telemann Society of New York in 1961 (Vox STDL-500‐750) and the Edward Tarr Brass Ensemble in 1976 (Erato STU-­70‐944/Mus H Soc MHS-­4505), the latter on baroque trumpet, and on a recording of Schütz’ Christmas Oratorio with the Studio de Musique Ancienne de Montréal in 1980 (Damzell DLM-­813), also on baroque trumpet. He continued to teach private students and remained actively involved with former students until his death at 88 years old.

King Achilla Rufino Orru Apaa-idomo

King Achilla Rufino Orru Apaa-idomo was a Uganda-born blind musician whose primary instrument was the lukembé. His ethnic background was Karamojong. Orru came to Canada as a refugee in 1989. While studying international development at Dalhousie University in Halifax, he started a band, Baana Afrique, which he reformed with local musicians when he moved to Toronto after graduation in 1995. In Toronto, Achilla Orru was also well known as a TTC subway musician, often playing at Bloor-Yonge subway station. His 2004 album Dho-Mach (Sacred Gift) was nominated for the 2005 Juno Award for World Music Album of the Year. He died on February 4, 2013 at the age of 53.

Del Dako

DEL DAKO (saxophonist, vibraphonist, composer, producer, teacher) was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada where, for more than three decades, he has enjoyed a thriving career as a musician and educator. He amassed impressive playing credentials as a jazz saxophonist, accomplished on both baritone and alto saxes, before a serious accident in the fall of 2001 rendered him unable to play the saxophone. He dedicated himself to mastering the vibraphone, and in the years since, his career has returned to full swing playing that instrument. As a jazz saxophonist, Dako won numerous awards and honours, and played with jazz greats including Eddie ‘Cleanhead’ Vinson, Big Nick Nicholas, Nick Brignola, Slim Gailliard, and was a member of Jim Galloway’s Wee Big Band. He played in everything from small groups to big bands, and frequently in solo or duet settings. He completed two coast-to-coast tours in Canada, and has played throughout the United States and Europe in jazz clubs, festivals, corporate events, and private parties.<>/p> All six of Del Dako’s performances during the “Sound of Toronto Jazz” Concert Series were as a saxophonist: as a member of Jim Galloway’s Wee Big Band on February 12. 1979; with Shox Johnson and The Toronto Jive Bombers on March 24. 1980; with Reeds and Rhythm on January 12, 1981; as part of the Larry Cramer/Del Dako Quintet on November 21, 1983; leading the Del Dako and Streetbeat band on November 7, 1988; and as a member of the Archie Alleyne Orchestra on October 18, 1999. Del Dako passed away on January 19th, 2013.

Tom (Stompin’ Tom) Connors

Died March 6, 2013, Age: 77 - Spanish Guitar, M.O.R./Country Vocalist - Joined November 22, 1973 - Life Member

Lois Lilienstein

Lindsay A. (Lenny) Boyd

Died June 6, 2015, age 81 - Double Bass - Joined September 1, 1955 - Life Member

John Wakefield

TMA Life Member and well- known former Pipe-Major of the Toronto Scottish Regiment Pipe Band, died on September 5th, aged 83. He began his piping career with the Rotary Highlanders Pipe Band in the 1950s and became its Pipe-Major, before moving on the 48th Highlanders of Canada Pipes & Drums, beginning a long career with the Canadian militia. Wakefield joined the Toronto Scottish in 1957, becoming pipe-major in 1962 until 1968. He returned as pipe-major of the regiment in 1970, until he retired in 1980. He received the Canadian Forces Decoration and was made a Member of the Order of Military Merit for his service with the Canadian Forces, rising to the rank of Chief Warrant Officer. He was appointed piper for the Lt. Governor of Ontario in the latter part of his life.

Kenny Gill

Retired Life Member Kenny Gill passed away quietly in West Vancouver, BC on September 28th at the age of 91, after a long, wonderful life as a professional musician. Kenny began playing guitar at the age of three in Pad- dockwood, Saskatchewan. His family moved to Burnaby, BC, where he lived until joining the Canadian Armed Forces Entertainment Troop. After World War II, Kenny at- tended the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. Here, he began his career as a professional guitarist.

Jacques Israelievitch

Died September 5, 2015, age 67 - Violin, Conductor, Concertmaster of TSO from 1988 - 2008 - Joined January 11, 1988 - Life Member

Peter Appleyard

Peter Appleyard, OC was a British–Canadian jazz vibraphonist, percussionist, and composer. He spent most of his life living and performing in the city of Toronto where for many years he was a popular performer in the city's nightclubs and hotels. Born: August 26, 1928, Cleethorpes, United Kingdom Died: July 17, 2013, Guelph/Eramosa

Jim Galloway

James Braidie "Jim" Galloway was a jazz clarinet and saxophone player. He based his career in Canada since emigrating from Scotland in the mid-1960s. He began an ensemble, the Wee Big Band, in the late 1970s. Born: July 28, 1936, Kilwinning, United Kingdom Died: December 30, 2014, Toronto

John Arpin

John Francis Oscar Arpin was a Canadian composer, recording artist and entertainer, best known for his work as a virtuoso ragtime pianist. Born: December 3, 1936, Port McNicoll, Ontario, Tay Died: November 8, 2007, Toronto

Jodi Drake

Blues and Jazz Singer Jodie Drake is a legend. From her beginnings in Detroit to her many years of breaking ground in Canada, she consistently promoted Black music, often simply through the power of her voice.

Jeff Healy

Norman Jeffrey "Jeff" Healey was a blind Canadian jazz and blues-rock vocalist and guitarist who attained musical and personal popularity, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s. Wikipedia Born: March 25, 1966, Toronto Died: March 2, 2008, Toronto

Jerry Fuller

Jerry (Lynn) Fuller. Drummer, born Calgary 5 Apr 1939, died Toronto 13 Jul 2002. After playing 1962-3 in Montreal with Maury Kaye, Fuller settled in Toronto, where he worked in lounge groups, hotel orchestras, jazz bands, and studio orchestras. He was a member 1969-72 and intermittently after 1985 of the Boss Brass, and played in the jazz groups of Art Ayre, Ed Bickert, Ron Collier, Jim Galloway, Sonny Greenwich, Doug Hamilton (Brass Connection), Moe Koffman, Lorne Lofsky, Kirk MacDonald, and others. As a sideman in local clubs (Bourbon Street, East 85th, George's Spaghetti House, etc) he accompanied more than 50 noted US jazz musicians, among them Pepper Adams, Ruby Braff, Al Cohn, Paul Desmond, Lee Konitz, Red Rodney, and Zoot Sims. In 1991 he introduced his own quartet with MacDonald (tenor saxophone), Phil Dwyer (tenor and saxophones, piano), and Neil Swainson (bass). Fuller continued to back up various musicians until 2002, mainly in Toronto but also occasionally in Montreal, and in Victoria in 2000. He took part in a CBC radio tribute to Duke Ellington in 1999.

Harry Somers

One of the greatest artists in the history of our country, died March 9, 1999. He left Canada and the world of music an inestimable legacy of some of the most original and dramatically powerful scores of the century. His work has embodied Canadian music for the last half century and is truly a major part of Canada's artistic heritage.

Glenn McDonald

William Glenn McDonald (August 29, 1939 – December 16, 1998) was a Canadian jazz saxophonist. Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, McDonald became rebellious as a teen and ended up in a reform school run by the Christian Brothers of Ireland. At the age of fourteen, he discovered the saxophone and Charlie Parker. He eventually moved to Toronto, and became a regular on Canada’s jazz scene from the 1960s through the 1980s.

Earl Seymour

Earl Seymour (tenor and baritone saxophone, EWI-Steiner) was born on Sept.13, 1951 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. For a short time, he held the baritone chair in the Boss Brass, recording “The Hi-Lo’s -Back Again” album with Rob McConnell and Boss Brass in 1978. At that time, Earl was in great demand as a session player and played on many recordings during the late ’70’s. Earl passed away on September 28, 1999 in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada of respiratory arrest at age 48.

Gary Binstead

Gary Edward Binsted, bassist, arranger, composer, was born in East York and grew up in North Toronto. Birth: May 25, 1943 Toronto Ontario, Canada Death: Apr. 29, 2010

Doug Riley

Douglas Brian "Doug" Riley, CM was a Canadian musician, also known as Dr. Music. He spent two decades with the Famous People Players as its musical director, besides his participation on over 300 album projects in various genres. Born: April 24, 1945, Toronto Died: August 27, 2007, Calgary

Dougie Richardson

DOUGIE RICHARDSON (saxophonist) was born March 24, 1937 in Toronto, Ontario and passed away January 25, 2007. A beloved Toronto performer, the veteran tenor saxophonist, a passionate player is best remembered for his long time association with the hard bop group “Kollage” formed by his childhood friend, drummer Archie Alleyne.

Arnie Chycoski

ARNOLD 'ARNIE' CHYCOSKI (trumpet, cornet) was born May 7, 1936 and passed away September 10, 2008 in Olympia, Washington . Called by celebrated band-leader Rob McConnell "one of the top three lead trumpet-players on the planet". Arnie Chycoski performed in the Sound of Toronto Jazz Concert Series on numerous occasions with Rob McConnell and The Boss Brass, as a member of the Ian McDougall Dectet, and in the “Tommy Ambrose with the Doug Riley Band” in concert on January 14, 1980. After a long and illustrious touring, recording, and concert career in Toronto, Arnie Chycoski retired to Victoria, British Columbia. Arnie passed away on September 10, 2008 near Olympia Washington.

Bob Fenton

BOB FENTON (pianist) was born in 1924, and passed away in Toronto on October 26, 2007 at 83 years of age. He was a respected jazz musician who continued to pursue a 40-year playing career right up until his illness. He was the long-time pianist with Jim Galloway’s Wee Big Band, and for many years, led the house band which performed at after-hours jam sessions during the Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival.